> For Mr. Hollock, the “Born to Lose” author, the issue is readers, not dollars. His award-winning book, published by Kent State University Press, had a steep list price of $35 to begin with. In the author’s view, Amazon is simply compounding the trouble by raising its price to more than $30 from $23.
Why is the author complaining about Amazon, when the list price is as high as $35? Yes, Amazon might have gone from $23 to $30, but that is still a 14% discount.
Why was the list price so high in the first place? Shouldn't the author be complaining about the press?
It's a 14% discount only thanks to the strange way pricing in the publishing industry has developed: it's a 14% discount off of an 100% markup.
For mostly historical reasons, wholesale price has become quasi-fixed at 50% of list. So in this case what's happened is the publisher has chosen to sell the book for $17.50, and the way you do that is by setting an entirely notional "list price" at 2x the intended wholesale price. But the $35 is not a real price; the real price in the publisher-bookstore exchange is $17.50. It's then up to bookstores how much they want to mark the book up above $17.50. Here, Amazon is choosing to sell it for a 70% markup above wholesale, whereas previously they were selling it for a 30% markup.
(This is U.S.-specific; list prices mean different things in different countries. Also, I believe the 'standard' ratio of wholesale-to-list varies in some categories, e.g. it's different for textbooks.)
You are correct, but the system isn't really as strange as you imply. Many wholesalers in many different markets set a recommended retail price that's some multiple of the wholesale price they charge to their customers.
As far as I understand, Amazon works out the optimal discount for a book based on a number of factors including the popularity of the book and the prices charged by their competition. The same book at B&N is $31.49 [1], 88 cents more than Amazon is charging.
I see we had the same thought! If prices are too high, supply and demand says you should be able to increase demand by dropping the price. Books certainly fall into the elastic demand (or did I get that backwards?) category.
> For Mr. Hollock, the “Born to Lose” author, the issue is readers, not dollars. His award-winning book, published by Kent State University Press, had a steep list price of $35 to begin with. In the author’s view, Amazon is simply compounding the trouble by raising its price to more than $30 from $23.
Why is the author complaining about Amazon, when the list price is as high as $35? Yes, Amazon might have gone from $23 to $30, but that is still a 14% discount.
Why was the list price so high in the first place? Shouldn't the author be complaining about the press?